First World Problems on Another Level

Playboy (On View)

Although art as a concept is something that is familiar to us on a primordial level – when we see ‘art’ in a museum, for example, we call it art because we somehow just know that it is – but it’s jarring to realize that if someone were to ask you out of the blue to define art, you would have a terribly difficult time trying to articulate your opinion.  In the case of Martha Rosler’s Playboy (On View), some people may not consider this work as art.  I disagree – in this series of works, Rosler produced remarkable innovation through the use of photomontages.  She juxtaposed images of the Vietnam War, an issue of foreign policy that was full of contention and controversy, with the image of a beautiful naked woman from the American Playboy Magazine, which was symbolic of the sexual revolution occurring at home in the 60s.  It’s a mimesis in the most disturbing sense; it imitates life abroad, in a world alien most Americans at the time and still to this day, in a way that brings attention to the horrific atrocities that went on there, much of them due to the actions of the Americans.  It’s also an imitation of life at home, too, providing commentary on the male gaze that so many women rebelled against in the time period.  In that way, it’s avant-garde – the viewer is made uncomfortable by what is displayed in the picture.

This work is political because it sought to either pose an uncomfortable truth to its viewers who were ignorant of the domestic and international state of affairs at the time, therefore raising awareness, or at least remind the viewers of their comfortable position as Americans while a brutal war was being fought in Vietnam.  Its intended message was that “American prosperity” came at the expense of other people as a result of imperialism for the sake of a free-market capitalist economy.  I don’t think it’s Rosler intended for it to have any other effect on the viewer except to make them become self-aware of their own position, both as an American and as a citizen of the world.  It wanted to point out how Americans had been essentially complicit in what its government and military were doing in another foreign country that many believed they had no business being in.

When we think of art, we tend to simply think of paintings and the like.  However, the experimental method of creating a photomontage helped to portray the situation in a whole new light – that while women were modeling nude for a magazine catered to men, journalists on the other side of the world were capturing the most dismal horrors known to humanity through their cameras.  The photomontages made things seem much more real and palpable to a viewer in the 60s.